Archive for the ‘Anxiety’ Category
Courage to Accomplish Change
Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. From now on you will be travelling the road between who you think you are and who you can be. The key is to allow yourself to make the journey.
Author Unknown
Energy Therapies Can Defuse Bad Memories
From the Psychology Today Blog with Eric Newhouse
Published on February 13, 2012 by Eric Newhouse in Invisible Wounds
After reading Dr. Norman Doidge’s remarkable book, The Brain that Changes Itself, I tracked Doidge down by phone at his office in the University of Toronto to ask whether neuroplasticity (see my previous blog, “The Plastic Brain”) could be used as a therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“Yes,” he said immediately, adding that EMDR was the most promising treatment that he was aware of.
A number of counselors are already using eye movement and desensitization reprogramming with promising results. EMDR involves remembering a painful incident, but stripping it of its emotional content by asking the patient to follow the therapist’s fingers with his or her eyes. Then when the memory is stored away again, it’s in a less threatening form. Dr. Francine Shapiro, the founder of EMDR, found that three 90-minute sessions could alleviate symptoms of civilian PTSD in more than 77 percent of the patients she treated.
Several years ago, I interviewed Heather Krysak, who had recently ended a nine-year career with the New York National Guard in which she had been involved in heavy combat in Iraq that left her battling anxiety, fear, nightmares, depression and anger.
“Eye movement desensitization was really weird,” she told me. “It brought things out of my memory that I had been totally repressing from Iraq. One moment I was laughing, and the next moment I was crying.”
While she still experiences nightmares, she said, they were less intense and much less frequent after her EMDR therapy.
A related alternative is emotional freedom techniques (EFT), which involves remembering a painful incident. Four elements are generally components of this trauma: 1) it’s a perceived threat to survival; 2) it overwhelms the coping capacity, creating a sense of powerlessness; 3) it violates expectations; and 4) it creates a feeling of isolation and aloneness. While remembering this trauma, the vet puts a positive spin on it and begins tapping a series of acupressure points (the same points that the Chinese have used for acupuncture over the past five millennia). A vet might say, “I had to shoot the kid who ran toward my Humvee wearing an explosive vest, but I completely and fully accept myself” and begin tapping his way through five acupressure points on his face and three on his torso. For exact locations, check out the EFT Web site:http://www.eftuniverse.com/
One of the most passionate advocates of EFT is Ken Self of Boston, a veteran of 11 years in the Marine Corps who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and two more tours in Iraq. He had three issues that were crippling him emotionally, including being forced to shoot a child. “That came back to me night after night for years,” he told me recently. Before he started the therapy, he rated his anxiety levels as 8 on a scale of 10, but after tapping them out, they were reduced to 0, he said.
“After tapping, you still have the emotion, but it doesn’t own you,” he said. “It’s not overwhelming. It’s just a memory.”
For more information, visit the Veterans’ Stress Project at http://www.stressproject.org/
The Veterans Stress Project has completed a study in which 59 vets with PTSD received EFT. EFT is a drug-free coaching technique which can be done via Skype. It involves brief cognitive and exposure protocols but adds the novel element of the vet’s own physical stimulation by light tapping. Before treatment, the group averaged 66 on the Traumatic
Stress Disorder Checklist-Military (PCL-M) test on which 50 or above is considered PTSD, but after six one-hour coaching sessions, the average score dropped to 35. On follow up, average scores remained far below the clinical criteria for PTSD at 35 on three-month follow-up and 38 on six-month follow up.
Dawson Church, founder of the non-profit, concluded: “The wait-list group’s results were unchanged over time, while the EFT group demonstrated statistically significant drops in PTSD, from clinical to subclinical scores, as well as improvement in the severity and breadth of a range of comorbid psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. The results of the present study are consistent with previous trials showing that brief EFT interventions improve PTSD as well as co-occurring conditions, with gains maintained over time.”
The Veterans Stress Project is looking for vets with military-related stress who are willing to participate in further studies, including an exact replication of the trial described above. For more information, visit the Veterans’ Stress Project Web site, listed above, or call 707-237-6951.
While I’m not affiliated with EFT in any way, I should say that I have personally benefited from it. In 1997, I was driving my rig along a frontage road outside of Great Falls, Mont., when a battered old car slowed down in the approaching traffic lane and the left turn signal came on. Just as I approached it, the car edged into my lane and broadsided me on the driver’s side door. My rig dropped into the ditch, came up over a driveway and became airborne. It landed on its passenger side wheels and rolled; I remember seeing the windshield blow out in slow motion. The rig was totaled. I was unharmed but very shaken up.
For the next few years, I had an unusual reaction every time I approached a car signaling to cross my lane of traffic. My heart started pounding, my throat constricted, my mouth got dry and my gut twisted. I generally had a strong urge to stop dead in the road and wave the guy in front of me across the road.
Then a friend introduced me to EFT. The next time an approaching car signaled a left-hand turn, I told myself, “This scares me, but I totally believe that driver will obey the traffic laws.” Tapping seven pressure points seemed too complicated, so I just tapped my own breastbone, right over my thumping heart. After four or five encounters, I was totally surprised to realize that I no longer needed to do it. And it has not been a problem since.
I wondered at the time if that was like PTSD so I asked a local counselor about it. “You were probably suffering a small stress disorder, but a tiny one compared to most vets,” he said. “You were in an accident, but you weren’t harmed, nor was anyone else. You weren’t out in the field, picking up pieces of your friends and putting them in body bags. And this happened to you once, not two or three times a day for 12 or 15 months.”
That gave me a whole new appreciation for what our combat vets are going through.
How stress damages your health and what you can do to reduce Stress
1. You think about something stressful—work, money, relationships, family, whatever’s bothering you.
2. Your amygdala (in your mid-brain) senses danger.
3. Your amygdala helps to initiate your body’s fight-or-flight response to stress.
4. In “fight or flight”, your body releases adrenaline and the “stress hormone” cortisol, diverts blood away from your digestive tract, leaving you less able to digest food and absorb nutrients AND more likely to gain weight.
5. In this physiological “crisis mode,” you’re more vulnerable to pain—from chronic illness, arthritis, fibromyalgia, migraines, stomach upset, and more.
6. In this state of heightened physiological “alert”, your brain’s creative center is deemed “non-essential” and shuts down. Down goes your problem solving, your creative skills, your intuition.
7. You feel increasingly irritable, isolated and impatient. Your relationships suffer.
8. Stress affects your sleep. Your metabolism slows.
9. Your body secretes even more cortisol, wreaking more havoc on your digestion (and waist line), increasing your blood pressure, lowering your immune response.
10. After releasing too much cortisol for too long, your body goes into “adrenal fatigue.” You feel depleted, exhausted, and depressed.
11. You no longer have the energy to adhere to your exercise routine, your healthy eating, meditation, yoga. Migraines, insomnia, stress-related hair loss, chronic pain, and any number of other issues become regular parts of your life.
12. Battling low energy, you can hardly focus at work, and elsewhere. Your relationships suffer.
13. Your depression deepens. You (and your body) are STRESSED OUT.
What you can do to reduce Stress
Using EFT Tapping, Emotional Freedom Techniques for up to 25 mins reduces cortisol levels by 24% within one hour, providing powerful stress relief, which is faster than most traditional and alternative stress methods.
EFT Tapping regulates and balances activity between the sympathetic and parasympathetic regions to achieve balanced activity and optimal health.
The sympathetic region of your brain
Prepares your body for vigorous physical activity, speeding your heart, dilating pupils, contracting blood vessels, reducing digestive secretions.
The parasympathetic region of your brain
Prepares your body for relaxation, cell regeneration, and digestion by slowing the heart, constricting the pupils, stimulating digestive secretions, and dilating blood vessels.
Tapping Reduces levels of excessive cortisol and “adrenal fatigue,” your body and mind re-balance. Your energy is restored, you sleep better, feel healthy again. Your metabolism is restored. Your body is again able to heal itself.
EFT Tapping quickly relieves chronic stress on physical and mental/emotional levels.
Source of information – Tapping Summit
If you would like to experience EFT tapping also known as, Emotional Freedom Technique, or attend one of our EFT Training workshops in Dublin then please call Ray or Aisling today for an appointment 01- 2986507
Stress,What is Stress, What causes Stress and how do you release stress?
What is Stress, What causes Stress and how do you release stress ?
What is Stress? Is stress making you sick ?
Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand. Both good and bad experiences can cause stress. When people feel stressed by something going on around them, their bodies react by releasing chemicals into the blood. If their stress is in response to something emotional which is often the case and there is no outlet for this emotion it gets stuck in the body, the body feels under attack and starts to create illness if not dealt with.
What causes stress :
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Stanford University Medical School, and numerous health experts, the number one killer on the planet is STRESS! Up to 95% of all physical and nonphysical health problems have stress as their origin. Every time we have a health problem we should be asking, “What stress is causing this, and how can I eliminate it?”
Wrong Beliefs Cause Stress:
According to research at Stanford University by Dr. Bruce Lipton, stress originates from wrong beliefs we hold about our circumstances and ourselves. These wrong beliefs cause us to misinterpret our circumstances, our environments as threatening, which creates internal stress.
Stress comes from the inside out. Because of these false beliefs and misinterpretations, you then view your life, your personal circumstances and the world around you, as being dangerous and threatening to you causing the cells in your body to break down so you are less able to heal yourself and the body looses its capacity to heal naturally.
The Real Problem:
The destructive internal images that we broadcast sends a signal of fear all over the body, sending the nervous system into a state of fight or flight. This state is synonymous with stress. Over time the fight or flight syndrome will lead to illness and disease, and our internal defense mechanisms begin to shut down resulting in anxiety disorders.
Are you experiencing stress in the work place ?
Are you looking to reduce stress ?
Are you ready for some stress relief ?
There is a way to reduce the negative Stress through stress management techniques.
How do you release stress ?
By using EFT Emotional Freedom Techniques, you are able to change these false beliefs, and misinterpretations. When YOU relieve stress the body goes in to healing mode. Your immune system then becomes “supercharged” and you rid yourself of illnesses, and protect yourself from creating new ones.
Your body is the world’s most perfect healing machine, when your cells are not forced into a defensive position, brought on by stress.
EFT – Emotional freedom technique ,gets to the heart of the matter and has been shown to address the real cause of sickness and disease at the cellular level… where disease, illness, and sickness actually starts.
Dr. Bruce Lipton, a former Stanford Medical School Research Cellular Biologist says in his New York Times best selling book “The Biology of Belief,” that the stress that causes more than 95% of all illness and disease is caused by a wrong belief. That wrong belief is an interpretation of destructive cellular memories.
So these memories give off destructive energy signals of fear, anger, low self worth, depression, sadness, anxiety, overwhelm, irritation, resentment, bitterness, panic disorders, manic panic you name it. There are hundreds of wrong beliefs that are interpretations of our cellular memories and our experiences.
EFT heals destructive memories or beliefs which allows the immune system to start to heal whatever needs to be healed.
There are so many sources that are saying similar things to Southwestern Medical School and Dr. Lipton about these unconscious or sub-conscious memories, wrong beliefs, as being the very source of stress related illness and disease which brings about anxiety, be it generalized Anxiety disorder, social anxiety, nerves, panic attacks etc…
While you can take stress tests everyone is different so the best way to reduce stress is to be aware of the Symptoms of stress and take action to bring your mind and body back into balance using EFT Emotional Freedom Tapping, Hypnosis, Meditation, along with many additional therapies that we use at our clinic in Sandymount or Ballinteer.
If you would like to reduce stress then please call us on 01- 2986507 and we will help you relieve stress easily and effortlessly. Aisling Killoran & Ray Manning
